Kausin passes professional development program
Salinas – Felicia Perez Kausin, the Director of Membership at the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce, was among 68 participants in the first year class of Academy, a professional development program presented by the Western Association of Chamber Executives (WACE).
Academy is an interactive three-day (three year) training program on chamber management essentials designed for today’s chamber executives and staff professionals.
The first-year Academy curriculum included three-hour classes on chamber Organization, Management, Membership Development & Retention, Finance, Legal Issues, Volunteer Development and Marketing & Communications.
WACE is an association of chamber of commerce executives and staff professionals in seven Western States designed to promote and enhance the professional development of chamber of commerce executives. With approximately 770 members from fourteen Western States, WACE is the largest state or regional association of chamber of commerce executives in the United States.
San Francisco hotel workers reach agreement on contract
San Francisco – More than 4,000 hotel workers have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with the owners of 13 city hotels, averting a strike and ending two years of tense negotiations.
Negotiators for the Unite Here Local 2 union finished hammering out the details of the five-year contract with the hotels late Tuesday.
The settlement followed an overwhelming vote by union members on Aug. 25 to authorize a strike.
Non-tipped workers would receive a three-dollar-an-hour raise under the new contract, and contributions to workers’ pensions would increase by 70 percent, said union president Mike Casey, who called the agreement “tremendous.”
The contract would guarantee full health coverage and give the union the right to organize at nonunion hotels without interference, he said.
The employers locked out all 4,200 union members for nearly seven weeks and hired nonunion replacements after the union declared a two-week strike when their last contract expired in 2004.
Negotiations are set to begin in the coming weeks between the union and at least 35 other city hotels on behalf of 5,000 more workers not covered by the current agreement.
PC glitch found when running AOL and playing some Sony CDs
Los Angeles – The much-maligned copy protection program that Sony BMG Music Entertainment put on CDs last year is still posing a threat to computer users running certain versions of AOL or PestPatrol antivirus software.
The glitch may cause a computer’s CD-ROM drive to be disabled, according to the Texas attorney general’s office, which said Wednesday that the problem was discovered by officials who have been testing the XCP copy-protection technology as part of the state’s lawsuit against Sony BMG.
State investigators found that if a CD with XCP technology is loaded on a computer running AOL’s “Safety and Security Center” software, the program’s antispyware feature will attempt to delete the XCP components, but often while also disabling the CD-ROM’s configuration in the PC’s operating system.
CA, formerly known as Computer Associates, and AOL were informed of the glitch last month and have made a software patch available that fixes it.
Texas’ lawsuit against the record company claims the XCP software that prevents unauthorized copying of music violated antispyware and consumer protection laws because it monitored users’ activities without their knowledge. Several class-action lawsuits against Sony BMG have been settled.
